As the line between the physical and online worlds thins, disruptions to digital services and the proliferation of online harms can negatively impact our well-being. Recognising this, one of the goals of Singapore’s refreshed Smart Nation vision (also known as Smart Nation 2.0) is to build a Smart Nation that we can trust.
To achieve that, Singapore will introduce a new Digital Infrastructure Act in 2025 to improve the reliability of key digital infrastructure and services.
According to the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI), the proposed law will address a broader set of resilience and security risks across systematically important digital infrastructure, ranging from technical misconfigurations to physical hazards such as fires and cooling system failures.
Besides that, the city-state intends to set up a dedicated government agency to support victims of online harms and enhance online safety.
The agency will act on behalf of victims to direct perpetrators and online service providers to put a stop to the online harm quickly, providing added assurance on top of existing regulatory levers and court-based processes available today. It will focus on the most serious and prevalent online harms affecting victims in Singapore, such as cyberbullying and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.
The agency will be backed by a new law, which will better enable victims to seek civil remedies against perpetrators of online harms.
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To further prevent harmful online activities, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) will introduce a new Code of Practice requiring specified social media services to put in place measures to prevent and counter the abuse of digitally manipulated content on their services (or deepfakes). IMDA will engage social media services in the coming months to work out the details of the Code.
Just last month, the Elections (Integrity of Online Advertising) (Amendment) Bill was introduced in parliament. It proposes to prohibit the publication of digitally generated or manipulated Online Elections Advertising that realistically depicts an election candidate saying or doing something that he or she did not in fact say or do, from the issuance of the Writ to the close of polling on Polling Day.
